


Traveling over rocky ground

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Related, Flashbacks, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2013-02-05
Packaged: 2017-11-28 08:16:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/672228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam had nightmares during the year Dean was in Purgatory. Still had them sometimes. Coda for 8.06.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Traveling over rocky ground

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: Thank you to geckoholic for the beta. Title from Bruce Springsteen. With references to Sam/Amelia and whatever you think Dean and Cas are. Prompted by this [photograph](http://sargraf.tumblr.com/tagged/if-ever-there-were-a-photograph) \-- I was practically dared to write a fic based on it, so I did.

The air smelled of wet moss, mud, and something not quite like smoke. Sam found the combination familiar by now, along with the damp leaves beneath his bare feet, the pale light of the sun that was too faint to cast much shadow. He followed the sound of running water, bushes snagging at his t-shirt as he pushed through, stumbling to the edge of a stream. Gooseflesh rose along his arms, the cuffs of his jeans soaked, the cry of something unimaginable up in the trees. Sam reached for a knife, or a gun, but all he had was himself, in the clothes he'd fallen asleep in a few hours ago. 

There was a paler shape among the tangle of fallen branches across the stream. Sam found a thick log to climb onto for a better view, arms spread for balance. The banks formed a tunnel that closed in too suddenly, blood rushing in his ears. 

_No, no, no_ it couldn't be, this couldn't happen, Dean hadn't been there alone, he couldn't be this battered body lying sprawled across the tree trunk, face-down with the curve of his bare arms hanging towards the water, fingers limp.

Sam jerked forward, barely keeping his balance on the trunk as a chill spread over him and his breath rose in clouds even though the temperature of the air hadn't changed. The shriek of the unnamed creature grew louder.

* * *

Sam startled awake, his heart going highway-fast, scents and sights of the dream clawing at him as if trying to pull him back. The glow of the vacancy sign outside the window coated the motel room with a blue-green cast.

The other bed was empty, covers shoved messily aside.

Cursing, Sam sat up, then went still as he spotted his brother over in the corner of the room, his back to the wall. Dean was poised in his battle-ready stance, shoulders tensed and the knife he slept with under his pillow gripped in his hand, and Sam had seen that body language in Dean a thousand times, but there was an unfamiliar edge to it. It filled the small room, made the hairs on the back of Sam's neck stand up, made him look to see if anything was moving or trying to come in through the window or crawling across the ceiling. It was Dean and yet not Dean, it was something that belonged to that place of moss and strange cries and not to here.

Slowly getting to his feet, Sam said, "Dean," very quietly, and Dean snapped his attention around to Sam, knife blade flashing blue-green from the vacancy sign.

They stared at each other, seconds sliding by, and then Dean blinked. "Sam?" He was Dean again. Still tensed in fighting mode, but he relaxed a fraction, and the uncanny feeling was gone.

"Yeah, it's me."

"You okay?" Dean said. "Thought I heard you hollering."

"I might've." Sam sank back down onto the mattress. "I…uh…I had a bad dream." 

Dean slid the knife back under his pillow and crawled back into bed as if nothing much had happened. Nothing more to see here. 

After a drowsy minute or two where Sam thought his brother had fallen back asleep, Dean said, "what about?"

The neon green-blue flickered and steadied. "Nothing." Sam rearranged his pillows. "It was…it's nothing."

* * *

After the fight, they let Garth clean them up, although they were both very used to tending to themselves or each other, but they endured while Garth got the hydrogen peroxide and the cotton balls. He cleaned them up one at a time as they sat in a chair.

It was weird but also comforting to have him there. 

"You have to keep the cuts clean," Garth advised them. 

"Yeah, Garth, we know." Dean said with great patience and tolerance, maybe even a hint of gratitude. 

Dean avoided looking at Sam, and neither of them spoke much at all. 

Sam kept his eyes down on the coffee table and heard Garth sigh into the quiet.

* * *

Sam kept his eyes on the map, refolding it to keep the region they were headed for visible, pen flashlight in his teeth. So he couldn't talk even if he wanted to, which he didn't, and focusing on the lines and curves on the paper helped him ignore the small cold knot lodged somewhere near his stomach.

They'd had easy long drives and long drives where the air in the Impala seemed like an actual tangible thing pressing on them. This was something in-between, where they fell into the usual routine, Dean tapping his fingers on the wheel as he drove with the radio set to a classic rock station, volume turned down low right then, both trying to tread too carefully. 

Dean yawned and took one hand from the wheel to rub his eyes.

Letting the pen light drop, Sam said, "I could drive."

"I'm good." Dean reached to turn the volume up.

Maybe it was only the deep shadows cast by the flash of passing car or gas station lights, but Dean didn't look good. A snatch of the dream, that broken body lying sprawled across the branches, made Sam twitch his shoulders and grab up the flashlight again to resume his work on the map.

* * *

He'd been driving aimlessly, with no particular destination in mind, losing track of what state line he'd just crossed, brain spinning over possibilities, theories, contacts he should work, but it had been too many theories, too many points where he should maybe begin and Metallica had been crashing too loud from the Impala's tape deck when he'd hit the dog.

The creature had been in pain, whining as Sam knelt in the road with the Impala's headlights cascading over them, and it'd been too much, too many losses, but this had been right in front of him, he could save this at least, even if he'd failed everywhere else.

* * *

They stopped at a diner whose tables were covered with small representations of highway number markers. A guy in a tan coat with spiky dark hair sat at the counter, back to them, bowl of soup in front of him, and it was impossible to miss the way Dean's steps slowed, the twitch of his fingers into a fist, before he walked on and slid into a booth. 

Dean ate his cheeseburger like he was on automatic, needing the fuel rather than enjoying it much, while Sam added extra dressing onto his chef's salad to compensate for how wilted the lettuce was.

When Sam went up to pay at the register, a woman was eyeing the desert case, trying to decide what to order. 

"Better call dibs while you can," the waitress said, nodding her head towards the case. 

There was one slice of apple pie left.

"I'll take the pie," Sam said quickly, before the other customer could order it instead.

"Huh?" Dean looked up as Sam put the plate down on the table.

"It was the last slice. So--" Sam shrugged, then drank the rest of the water from his glass. 

Dean stabbed into the pie with a fork and took a bite. "Oh, this is good stuff. It's not that canned compote crap most diners use." He took another bite. "Thanks, Sammy," Dean tossed off, like it was no big deal, except for the way Dean said it.

* * *

It had been such a small thing, not even necessary for the Impala to be road-ready, but when the handle on the rear door had jammed, Sam found it hard to breathe and had to go sit on the bench at the bus stop nearby until it got better. 

He'd gotten right to work fixing the handle, and while he was fixing the handle, he'd noticed a tear in the door's lining, and then he'd noticed an odd noise in the engine, so he'd checked into a motel and popped up the hood for a day that had turned into another, and another, and another. He'd worked on her every day for weeks. The management didn't seem to mind a tall, sweaty guy with his head stuck into an engine most of the time, tools and parts spread out on the cement. 

Sam had cut himself on a sharp metal part, blood welling up red through the grease on his fingers. He'd watched it drip bright spots onto the chrome before he grabbed a towel of dubious levels of clean and pressed it on the wound.

Wasn't the first time he'd bled on the Impala.

A few weeks later, he'd hit the dog.

* * *

Dean spread the old sheet he kept for that purpose onto the floor of yet another shabby motel room and they got to work cleaning the guns. 

Sitting cross-legged opposite Dean, Sam picked up a cleaning rod and started on the Taurus. Familiar tasks, the TV on reruns of an old 80's show they'd both seen a hundred times, not enough to focus on and the harder Sam tried not to think about Amelia, the more she was there. The memory of the weight of her curled on his chest, her head tucked just so below his chin, the warmth and defenses. He hadn't thought it could hurt this much ever again; the only thing keeping it from being worse was the thought that she was safe, she was out there, taking Riot for a walk, boiling spaghetti, breaking kitchen appliances.

"Hey, earth to Sam?" Dean leaned forward, snapping his fingers in front of Sam's face.

Sam blinked and got back to cleaning, as did Dean. But after a moment, Sam lowered the brush again. He watched Dean's confident, efficient movements as he went to work on the sawed-off. 

"I had these nightmares," Sam said, a whole lot of other things on the verge of tumbling out, things about those first weeks, about that whole year, the horrible and the good. "The year you were gone. Still have them now sometimes. Where I see you in this…strange place and it looks like, I guess it's what I think Purgatory must've looked like." He couldn't tell him the rest, how many times he'd seen Dean die in those dreams. Or how Sam had looked at the old books and couldn't seem to focus, his thoughts skidding around like panicked rabbits. Or how he wondered why he could dream it but couldn't put a name to the place he'd seen.

"Well, I'm here," Dean said abruptly, as his grip tightened around a cleaning rod. "I'm here now," he added, looking right at Sam.

~end


End file.
